Freeholders put airport upgrade financing on hold

TRENTON — County freeholders pulled an ordinance from Tuesday night’s agenda meeting, postponing a decision which would allow Frontier Airlines to “foot the bill” for a terminal upgrade.

“We want to make sure all the details are taken care of, all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed,” said County Administrator Andrew Mair.

According to the proposed ordinance from the Mercer County Executive’s office, there is a need for modifications to the existing terminal, including a set of new bathrooms to be located in the passenger holding room, in order to accommodate the increase in passengers stemming from current five flights a day schedule.

Although there is over $615,000.00 in the county’s Passenger Facility Charge Fund the ordinance asks to borrow and additional $450,000.00, interest free, from Frontier to pay for the modifications upfront. It is still unclear if the Passenger Facility Charge Fund or borrowed monies would fund the enhancements to the terminal. The county would repay the borrowed amount by giving back 50 percent of the passenger facility charges from each flight, to Frontier.

“Our fund is pretty healthy and I did know that passenger facility charge cannot be used for parking areas,” said Freeholder Lucylle Walter during the meeting. “But if we pass the resolution that we have in our packet, it looks like we already have $250K from Frontier?”

During the meeting, officials from the airport authority clarified that in addition to the $450,000 requested to upgrade the terminal, Frontier will also fund upwards of $250,000 to develop a new parking lot. The payments must be made separately because passenger facility charges cannot fund external improvement to the airport, like parking facilities.

The county recently absorbed the costs to convert the former tennis grounds, located near the airport, into an extended parking lot, but according to the county executive additional parking spaces will be required in order to accommodate the surge of passengers.

“That would mean that we would owe $700,000 to Frontier and at $250 of passenger facility charges per flight paid back, I hope they have a very long and prosperous relationship with the airport,” joked Walter.